Zoids Wild: Blast Unleashed is the perfect game to discover the Zoids franchise, with an intense story mode and fast-paced battles of giant mecha in the shape of a dinosaur. However, it is a title that is not very deep and lacks online modes.

Even for newcomers to the franchise, there’s plenty of arena brawling fun to be had in Zoids Wild: Blast Unleashed. It’s sorely missing online multiplayer and the story mode is of inconsistent quality but it’s never not exciting to smash giant robot apes rode by anime villains with a Mecha shaped like a Lion. Never.

Zoids Wild: Blast Unleashed has come to do one thing: fight. Battle techniques built into gameplay have come a long way since the last arcade Zoids title, but Blast Unleashed manages to bring a strong, technical fighting emphasis to a long-running franchise.

Zoids Wild: Blast Unleashed is a light and colourful arena brawler that will please younger fans of the show, but anyone else will likely burn through it in short order.

Zoids Wild: Blast Unleashed is a relatively harmless licensed anime arena fighter. Superfans may enjoy its presentation, but nothing is here to rewards them for their time. The fighting system lacks any real depth of engagement, which boils down to a mindless button-masher until there’s a winner. Like the franchise, for me at least, Zoids Wild: Blast Unleashed is just forgettable.

Zoids Wild: Blast Unleashed isn’t setting any records or making innovative strides into the fighting game hall of fame. We’ll never see it any sort of formal competition. But even so, there’s heart to it. It tries to stay true to the the source and does offer some degree of variation to it. It is just made for a very small, narrow audience.

Zoids Wild: Blast Unleashed is a button-mashy, overly simplistic fighter that's aimed at young kids but doesn't even manage to lift its game enough to satisfy a junior audience on any level outside of very basic fan service. There's a serious lack of modes or variety here, especially for the not-insignificant price tag, and what is included is let down by a lazy story mode and some shockingly simple enemy AI. Serious Zoids fans may derive some fleeting pleasure from seeing their favourite characters battle it out, but, for everyone else, this is a mega-hard sell and a fighter that absolutely fades into insignificance when compared to other examples of its genre.